The Tsar’s Cross, a book by photographer Alexei Vladykin,
represents two decades’ work documenting the restoration of the Romanov
dynasty’s public reputation.

As a child, Alexei Vladykin would walk to school in his native Yekaterinburg past Ipatyev House, the place where the royal family was executed, without even knowing it. The building had been demolished in 1977 at the suggestion of KGB chief Yuri Andropov, a move approved unanimously by the ruling Soviet Politburo.

“I have no recollection of it being pulled down,” says Vladykin. “But I remember vividly years later, as a photojournalist, I travelled to the editorial office past an unkempt abandoned lot. And that at some point, a wooden cross was erected on the spot.”

The cross was put up by a local man, Anatoly Gomzikov. Vladykin recalls: “There were even plans among some officials and businessmen to build a casino on Voznesenskaya Gorka (Ascension Hill).

“Gomzikov was one of those who helped thwart those plans. He was a strong believer in God, an elderly man who had had his ups and downs in life, but had never lost his dignity – unlike those who broke down the wooden cross just a few days later.”

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A metal cross was erected in its place, and a year later, in 1992, residents and clergymen gathered to lay the first stone of the Church on the Blood at the site.

“I was taking pictures knowing that they would never be published; they were sure to be rejected by editors on ideological grounds,” says Vladykin. “But the events certainly had historical value, so I felt obligated to document them and then just shelved the negatives for the next 20 years.”

The cathedral was consecrated on June 16, 2003. “The most emotionally charged photos

I made were of Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya,” Vladykin says of the ceremony. “They vividly convey the emphatic pain many people feel about the tragic death of the royal family.”

Vladykin also photographed the head of the team that investigated the authenticity

of the remains of the royal family, Vladimir Solovyov. They first met in 1996, when the photographer asked whether the remains were really those of the Romanovs.

“He answered that there could be no doubt about it. I asked then if I could take a few pictures. I remember him taking me to the laboratory where several glass sarcophagi stood. He took me to the one that was open at the time and said it contained the remains of Grand Duchess Anastasia.”

Two years later, Vladykin watched as Yekaterinburg bade farewell to the royal family. “The fragments of their bodies were put in short coffins,” he says. “Two of them – the Emperor’s and the Empress’s – were covered with state flags. The procession of people stretched for several streets.

“People held flowers, icons and postcards with the Romanovs on them and whispered: ‘Forgive us.’”

The remains of Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia were moved to St Petersburg and reinterred in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

The burial sites of Tsarevich Alexei and Duchess Maria were not discovered until 2007 in the Porosenkov Log village near Yekaterinburg. Although investigators have no doubts that the remains belong to Nicholas’s children, the body fragments are still kept in the Russian State Archive.

“I met Solovyov recently again and gave him a copy of my album. I asked him when the line would finally be drawn under the tragic story,” Vladykin says. “I can remember his abrupt words: ‘I will not rest until I bury them all.’ I’d like to think this is how it is going to be.”

For now, however, the line has been drawn under Vladykin’s work. His album has been published – something he could not have dreamt of under the Communist regime and even in the Nineties.

“The album features some 200 photos on 176 pages, broken down into 10 chapters, each of them representing a major milestone event in my own life,” the photographer explains.

“I was 27 when I took the pictures of the cross in the deserted lot, and the photos for the last chapter of the book were made two years before my 50th birthday.”